The Last Story International Release Still Up In The Air

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Last night, a widely-advertised press conference for Nintendo/Mistwalker’s upcoming game, The Last Story, took place. The rumor mill had been churning for some time regarding the likelihood of an international release date being announced at this conference…

Well, the conference has come and gone, and despite an amazing (and at times, wacky) gameplay showcase and an amazing closing theme by Nobuo Uematsu, there wasn’t any mention of a worldwide release at all. The game looks polished, and contains more action elements than one generally expects in a Japanese RPG. It is also widely rumored to be Hironobu Sakaguchi’s last title.

Nintendo appears to have thrown its entire marketing machine behind the title, which will hopefully stir up some sales for the stagnant Wii console in Japan. The question is: will the title be released overseas?

The answer is: nobody knows for sure, but the outlook isn’t great. First of all, Xenoblade was heavily marketed in Japan as well (I was in the country during the game’s launch). In the US, however, the game remained on the upcoming release list for some time under its original name of MONADO until a few weeks ago – when it was quietly deleted. Looking at the situation purely from a marketing point of view, The Last Story does indeed have a better chance of receiving a localization than Xenoblade (after all, “From the creator of Final Fantasy” certainly works better as a tagline than “From the creator of Xenosaga“), but Nintendo is as tight-lipped as usual and our chances of finding out anything before they’re willing to comment are slim.